Evelyn Dunbar (1906 - 1960)

First page of a letter to Jane Carrington, c.1936 [HMO 688]

£990.00

SKU: 5822
Pen & ink on paper
10 x 8 in. (25.5 x 20.4 cm)

Presentation:
framed

Size:
Height – 25.5cm x Width – 20.4cm

1 in stock

DESCRIPTION

Provenance:
The Hammer Mill Oast collection
Exhibited: Evelyn Dunbar – The Lost Works, Pallant House Gallery, October 2015 – February 2016, cat 118.
Literature: Evelyn Dunbar – The Lost Works, Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2015, cat 118page 169.
Jane Carrington was the daughter of Dunbar’s Hampstead friends No√´l and Catherine Carrington. Dunbar wrote several such letters to Jane, then a six-year-old in hospital with polio. Usually these letters were prettily water-coloured. Why this uncoloured example was never sent is not known.

Sketchbooks & Ephemera
“When Evelyn Dunbar enrolled at the Royal College of Art in 1929 it was a toss-up
as to whether she would apply for the Design School or the Painting School and although Painting won she maintained a strong interest in design and included many designerdraughtsmen among her friends, particularly Edward Bawden and Barnett Freedman.
Like them she enjoyed free-hand pattern-making and filled many sketchbooks with
pictorial jottings of people, places and incidents which could be worked up later when
required into vignettes to decorate such publications as The Scots Week-End (page
170) and Gardeners’ Choice (pages 82-95). Equally, they could be incorporated into
subject paintings like The Days of the Week, or used in any one of her other decorative
projects. Whether working in sketchbooks or on loose scraps of paper she was happy
drawing in line either with pen or pencil, or with clean strokes of a well-charged brush, using the latter particularly to create decorative patterns often reminiscent of Vanessa Bell’s designs for Hogarth Press bookjackets for her sister’s ‚Äì Virginia Woolf’s ‚Äì novels.
Through Mahoney and other Royal College contacts she would also have been familiar
with the work of the Curwen Press, particularly the pattern papers inspired by the
recently deceased Claud Lovat Fraser and produced by Paul Nash, Edward Bawden,
Enid Marx and others.
In her early days she had a natural playfulness which is reflected in her illustrated
letters to Jane Carrington and Edward Bawden; those to Charles Mahoney – who she
addressed variously as Dear Chas’, Dear Matey Cock’ or My dear old potting shed’
– stand out particularly. By the late 1930s this natural gaiety and joie de vivre gave
way to a less light-hearted mood as the disparity between her Christian Science
upbringing and Mahoney’s atheistic socialism increasingly drove a wedge between
them. Apart from the rift with Mahoney this mood of greater seriousness chimed with that of the country as a whole as the clouds of impending war grew ever darker. Her Shell poster designs (CAT 82-84) probably date from this time and it is probable that Barnett Freedman encouraged her to produce some possible ideas as, in the late 1930s, he was commissioned by his friend Jack Beddington, who ran the Shell publicity department, to create puzzle’ advertisements for use in various technical journals. Dunbar may have thought that with their simple kitchen imagery of shelling peas combined with semihumourous captions ‚Äì I Shell’, Thou Shellest’ ‚Äì they might appeal to various ladies’
journals. (see Ruth Artmonsky, Jack Beddington, The Footnote Man, London, 2006, p.54). It is not surprising that they were not developed further, but they were the precursors
to Dunbar’s Mother Hubbard (CAT 81) commissioned by I C I, and used for publication
in a variety of different publications in much the same manner as Beddington’s puzzle’
advertisements.
Scrapbooks and artists’ Christmas cards were a particular feature of the interwar period
and beyond. Edward Bawden’s and Eric Ravilious’s scrapbooks in the collection of the
Fry Gallery, Saffron Walden, contain many examples of cards from John Piper, Graham
Sutherland, Geoffrey Rhoades and other artist friends, including Dunbar and Mahoney.
After her marriage to Roger Folley Evelyn continued to produce her annual card usually
accompanied by some verse by her husband: that for Christmas 1947 – one of the
bleakest of postwar winters – depicts a particularly jolly figure of Pomona, the Roman
goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards (FIG 23), reminding us once again of
Evelyn’s delight in animating the spirits of the months and seasons, virtues and ancient
gods. Christian Science could not erase these pagan deities from her pantheon.”
Peyton Skipwith

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THE ARTIST

Evelyn Dunbar
Evelyn
Dunbar
1906 - 1960

Evelyn Dunbar studied at Rochester School of Art, Chelsea School
of Art (1927) and the Royal College of Art (1929’33). She painted
murals from 1933 -36 at Brockley School, a collaboration with her
RCA tutor (and lover) Cyril Mahoney (1903’1968) and in 1937
they wrote and illustrated together Gardeners’ Choice. 

In 1938 she set up the Blue Gallery in Rochester, exhibiting her
own work alongside that of Edward Bawden (1903’1989) and
Barnett Freedman (1901’1958) and others. In 1940 she was
appointed an official war artist, becoming the only woman (amongst
36 men) to be given a full time salaried position by the WAAC. 

She held her only solo exhibition at Withersdane, Wye, Kent
in 1953, although the WAAC included numerous pieces in touring
exhibitions ranging from Aberdeen Art Gallery to MOMA, New York. 

A posthumous exhibition was held in 2006 at St Barbe
Museum and Art Gallery, and in 2015 Liss Llewellyn mounted a
major retrospective of her recently rediscovered studio at Pallant
House Gallery. 

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Letterhead proof for The Children’s Shop c. 1950

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Sketches for the personification of April, for Country Life 1938 Gardener’s Diary 1937

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Study for a Christmas card design, 1942 [HMO 340]

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Sketch for Milking Practice with Artificial Udders

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Sketch for a portrait of an Airwoman reading

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Study of Dipsacus fullonum (common teasel)

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Phallic bud, 1937

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The Vegetable Gardener

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House and Garden – Greetings to you!

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Basket with Fruit and Flowers (2)

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Drawing of Carved Oak Buffet, 19th Century

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Study for June

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Illustration 2 for A Farm Dictionary

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Figures for Farm Dictionary Illustration
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Marjorie Reading, 1931

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Woman Sewing c.1925

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Young Woman Reading a Letter, c. 1927

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Sketches of clarinets

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The Law-abiding Citizen! c.1927

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Sketch for Bedtime, c.1926

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Story Time, c.1926

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Some Games…c. 1958

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Fancy Dress Ball, 1926

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Service! c. 1924

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Laddie, The Intruder, c.1923

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What fools…c.1926

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Portrait of William Dunbar, 1922

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Unidentified Woman with Parrot Brooch, c. 1927

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Seated Nude Study

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Reclining Male Nude Study

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Head and Shoulders Male Study

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April Fool!

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Landscape 1

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Landscape 2

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Artist Sketching

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View over fields

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View across farm buildings

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Study for Children and Hands

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The Young Artist, circa 1920

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Children Playing

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Child Playing the Banjo

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Noah’s Arc

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Sacred Music on Sundays’

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Farm Illustration 4

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Study 2 related to Princess Caroline
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Unidentified Design

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Design for a Christmas Card

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Sketch for An English Calendar 1938

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Unidentified study, c.1956

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Florence Dunbar Peeling Apples c.1922

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Miss T. and begging dog!

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Christmas Tree in a pot

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Figure Sitting

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Speciality Dancers
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Farm Dictionary Illustration 2

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Sketches and motifs for a Christmas card design, 1946

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Illustration for A Farm Dictionary

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Sketch for Joseph in Prison, 1947

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Seated Nude Study 2

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Nude Study of Woman Sitting

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Nude Study with Hand on Hip

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Seated Nude Study 1

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Sketches of two Land Girls featuring in Men Stooking and Girls Learning to Stook. Pencil 1940

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Portrait

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Study for Seated Woman reading

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Study for Seated Woman

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Chalk Nude Study with Sketching Figure in Foreground

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Sitting Nude Study with Umbrella

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Wheelbarrow Study

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The Farming Year Poster

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Vignette Sketch for Gardener’s Choice

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Studies for A Farm Dictionary (Evans Brothers, London) 1953

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Farming Sketch

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Plant studies, probably in connection with Country Life 1938 Gardener’s Diary.

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Flowers study

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Sketch for Land Girls Going to Bed.

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Portrait sketch of unidentified WAAF officer, 1944

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Studies for Standing by on Train 21.

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The horse gin

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Farmer with Shoulder Yolk – Study for Farm Dictionary

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Prune’

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‘Bottle, Bowl, Box’

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Pencil sketch for Portrait of an Airwoman, 1944

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Seated Woman with Sleeping Dog

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Royal College of Art Sketch Club Annual Summer Camp, 1930

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Portrait of an Unidentified Woman

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Portrait of an Unidentified Man, c.1925

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Ring-a-ring-a-rosies

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Trenching or double-digging, 1938

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A diagrammatic explanation of trenching or double digging

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Cape Capers!

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